This blog is a forum for Mentor High School Honors English 12 students to engage in book discussions based on free reading books.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Angels and Demons

Dan Brown's book Angles and Demons is a mystery novel about the adventures of Robert Langdon. This book is before the better know Da Vinci Code. It involves his journey through The Vatican City. The pope has recently died and a body is found in a physicist's lab. The body is branded with the symbol of an ancient society the Illuminati, an ancient scientist group, the Illuminati also stole a canister of anti-matter which in 24 hours will level the Vatican. Langdon goes on a quest to find it following the ancient "Path of Illumination" which leads him to four different locations each a different element: fire, air, earth, and water. At each spot one of the candidates to succeed the pope is murdered. Finally their search leads them back to the Pope's chambers. Where the leader of the company that lost the anti-matter is confronting the pope. Langdon believes the he is the leader of the Illuminati. The pope gets branded by the Illuminati Diamond and guards come in and kill the leader of the lab. Before the leader dies he gives Langdon a tape. It turns out that the old Pope had a kid the new Pope found out and killed him. Planted the bomb to make himself look like a hero.

1) Do you think that secret societies still exist and are active under our noses?

10 comments:

Firstly let me say ambigrams are awesome. Secondly i dont think theyre active under our noses because we live in mentor ohio, but im sure there are some societies out there that very few people know about.

I think it is inevitable that we will always have secret organizations that are active under our noses. Even though the government can heihgten security and prevent quite a few groups that could prove threatening to our nation, there will always undoubtedly be a few masterminds who are able to outsmart even the strongest of precautions made by the government. I know that sometimes I sit in my bed and think of ways to rob banks and do other rash and completely unrealistic things just to see how I could plan and what I would do under pressure. If I am just a person dreaming who can come up with some pretty fantastic and stealthy plans, I can't even begin to imagine what a person who actually is set out to create a scheme could do.

I definitely think that secret societies still exist today. It is virtually impossible to know about every organization in the world; there is simply no fool proof way of taking a count of all of them. Secret organizations are the foundation for terrorist groups, and sometimes, they are not discovered until a catastrophic event occurs. Unfortunately, in these cases, there is nothing to be done if people did not know the group even existed. Sometimes there is some preventable measure we can take and with the continuous increase of technology, our chances only grow. However, with that growing technology, it also becomes easier to keep secret societies and organizations. With everything that goes on in the world, it is essentially impossible to know of every organization.

I'm sure there are secret organizations/societies right under our noses. I'm sure some people crave being involved in something that may feel illicit without actually being illegal. Whatever floats their boat.

I definitely believe there are societies such as the illuminati today. I believe there are still people who are secretly trying to improve society, or like in the Da Vinci code, trying to hide some truth about the past.

First of all Russell, let me say that you stole my book. Second, I believe there are some secret societies left but there are probably more that are in known societies that do secret things. Think about the masons. everyone knows about who they are but does anyone really know what they do? the third novel in this series, the lost symbol, goes into more detail about them.

1. i do believe secret societies exist. if they didnt then there wouldnt be speculations of possible secret societies. these societies are doing a great job because not only are they functioning but they are good at keeping the public clueless but still interested enough to keep some publicity.